A statewide plan to raise the Hawaii’s tobacco tax in an effort to bolster state revenue and discourage smoking by minors has support on Kaua’i. House Bill 2741, which has received the backing of committees in the Legislature this year,
A statewide plan to raise the Hawaii’s tobacco tax in an effort to bolster state revenue and discourage smoking by minors has support on Kaua’i.
House Bill 2741, which has received the backing of committees in the Legislature this year, would double the state’s tax on cigarettes to $2 per pack, giving Hawai’i the highest tobacco tax in the nation.
Of the approximately $40 million in tax revenue that would be generated, $5 million would be allocated annually for the Hawai’i Tobacco Prevention and Control Trust Fund for government-funded anti-smoking campaigns.
Janice Bond, a Kaua’i resident who is a member of the trust fund’s advisory board, said she “would be glad for this allocation,” since the Legislature last year depleted the trust fund to help pay for a new University of Hawai’i medical school building.
Bond said Kaua’i has benefited from the original grants given in 2001 from the trust fund, “and I would like to see money continuing to go out into the community.”
Rep. Dennis Arakaki (D-Kalihi Valley), chairman of the House Health Committee, said HB 2741 could turn teenagers off to smoking by making cigarettes too expensive.
Smoking-related diseases claim an estimated 430,700 American lives each year, including those affected indirectly, such as babies born prematurely due to prenatal maternal smoking and some of the victims of secondhand exposure to tobacco’s carcinogens.
Bond, quoting national statistics, said smoking also costs the United States approximately $97.2 billion each year in healthcare costs and lost productivity, is directly responsible for 87 percent of lung cancer cases and causes most emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
Smoking is also considered a major factor in coronary heart disease and stroke.
Smoking by parents is also associated with a wide range of adverse effects in their children, including exacerbation of asthma, increased frequency of colds and ear infections, and sudden infant death syndrome.
Secondhand smoke involuntarily inhaled by non-smokers from other people’s cigarettes is classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a known human carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in American non-smokers.
Approximately 22.3 million American women are smokers. More of them die annually from lung cancer than any other type of cancer, including 67,600 in 2000, according to officials.
